


The First Noël

by prestissimo



Series: Lost Entries from the Daily Ledger of Nicolas de Lenfent [7]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Abandonment, Anxiety Attacks, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Synesthesia, Temporary Amnesia, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 01:11:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19262956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestissimo/pseuds/prestissimo
Summary: Nicolas manages to finally avoid the Théâtre's careful watch. The first thing he does is buy a ticket back home.





	The First Noël

“Monsieur de Lenfent, off the stage, if you would.”

Eleni. I recognize her. I open my eyes to the darkness of the ceiling, which isn’t all that dark to my new eyes. For a moment, I resist the urge to pluck them from my sockets and see if they would taste like blood. I grit my teeth and feel the wood beneath my curled fingers.

“Nicolas.” 

Her voice is nearer now, a resigned kind of disappointment giving her song such a lovely phrasing that a breath escapes me. When I turn my head, my mind shocks me with the sight of those graceful features in a terrifying, animal snarl, sinking into my neck as I gibber and grunt. She sees my flinch, and quick, before she can say anything pathetic, I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the stage. She looks down at my stockinged shoes with surprise and I look firmly at the floor when I speak.

“What is the matter?”

“We are short-staffed tonight, so no one is able to accompany you.” 

“To guard me, you mean. Like the insane fledgling I am?”

She ignores me.

“But I have a plan. Listen carefully.”

Her hand rises, waits for me to recognize it, and then pushes my hair away from my face. I close my eyes, trying to feel for her hand. I am a ghost inside this shell of flesh, unable to fully touch Creation. Her fingers card through my always-silken curls, gathering them once more into the pulling weight behind my head. On bad nights I fancy it sounds like piccolos, following me and—

“Nicolas. Have you been listening?”

Well, merde.

“D’accord, my enchanting choreographer.”

She doesn’t look like she trusts me, and I surprise myself with a pizzicato of guilt. Her oboeing has improved, especially when her melody is dancing against Armand’s ponderous tones.

“Then what did I ask you to do?”

“The same as always, of course, but then I shall disappoint you, and you will fail to berate me because you still bear the guilt—”

“Nicolas!”

Now the guilt pours in, and when I look back up at her again, I hope my visage possesses the decency to look remorseful. Her arms wrap around me—don’t flinch, Lenfent—and I bear the vise of her embrace for brief moments. And a moment more.

My arms begin to squirm of their own volition, to make room for my frantic, pounding heart. As I am about to voice, to try not to make it sound like a scream, she releases me. I try to pull my lips to match hers, something of a smile, I suppose. She nods and bites her lower lip, minor key. So elegant. And my little ruse worked.

I look about the stage, unreasonably pleased with myself as I watch her retreat. One would think it safe to assume that a theatre company of but six immortal monsters would find it easy to offer a vampire gentleman some privacy. I rush back to my dressing room to grab my coat, my money purse, and a black hat. Thank you, my dear Eleni, for the restored coiffure. Thank you, everyone else, for working so hard at our little enterprise that your cares neglected to find a nurse for your mad boy whom you’ve tasted as the only victim in a rapine slaughter.

And they did not even want me. Of course they did not want me, not when they could have had—ouch! I’ve gripped the handle too hard, and it dawns on me that I’ve been walking, that I am already outside a coffeehouse. That there is a piece of door handle stuck into my hand.

I hurry in, drawing some looks, some strings twanging and a few woodwinds set atwitter and I could have sworn I’d done this a long time ago, just right now. Right now! 

“Some coffee, please, a pot,” I blurt out, clutching my hand. Some gentlemen make way for this flustered student, exclaiming in surprise at the blood. I don’t hear anything at all. I just see the blood on my hand, someone else’s hand grabbing it. Their veins and arteries and tiny blood vessels look so delicate beside my own pale wash of paper-like skin, and for a moment I am caught between two memories.

There is a melody awakened and I recognize the face shimmering into recognition in the blazing light of the coffeehouse. The orchestra is quieting, descrescendo, into the background, into the underlayment.

“There you are, garçon, good as new.” 

“Thank you, Monsieur.”

But I only take the shape of a boy. Does your sight still detect any innocence writ upon my solemn expression? I have never sounded like a child, not even when I was one of you. But I learned when you did not know what to make of me, when you rejected this cuckoo foundling in your nest. What you failed to know, what you failed to see, my brothers. I can bring you revelations. I can—

“Pardon, Monsieur. Permit me to buy you a drink.”

“At a coffeehouse?” This feels familiar. Sizing each other up. Are we members of a confraternity? Like a madman, I study the tilt of his jaw, the arch of his back as it sits like a bird about to strike. There is a smart threading around his collar and I can feel my shoulders pulling back. I was once told it was the first step in my own complicated attempts to preen.

“Must we not indulge the mind as well as the body? If we are to war against the First Estate, what good is drunkenness when the mind remains unsullied?”

His hand is hot against my back and I stumble in the street. It is dark already, and I want to go home and lie down. My hand has a bandage on it for some reason, and I slip it off and put it in my pocket. Where are we? Serge steps into the alley where the lamplight does not strike, and beckons to me. 

The wind whips around my—where is my coat? Did I leave my coat back at the coffeehouse? I would draw stares walking down the street like this, and I cannot help but look towards Serge for advice. He is watching me, his form glowing with life in the darkness of the alley. I ignore the shout of the cobbles around us or the screaming of the mortar and wood, crying out, do not chop me down, do not grind me up, do not build your lives with the ending of mine. It is always wise to ignore the speech and sound of those bewitched things in the world, for that is the devil’s work. But now, so am I.

“Lost your nerve, loverboy?”

His voice sounds…wet. He will scream if I try anything and though the light’s blasted timpanis do not strike me, I feel raw from enduring the passage between the walls. I pull out the strip of bloodied fabric from my pocket. His eyebrows rise, and a smirk falls over his lips, a small upwards tilt of his…what is that, a viola? Who is a viola nowadays? What was I thinking?

He lays hands upon my forearms and when his lips approach mine, I am stabbed through with a thousand different melodies that chime like ceaseless alarums inside my head. Sometimes I pretend I have heard them so often that I do not hear them at all, but I didn’t pass the Sorbonne entrance examinations for nothing. 

I can show him, surely, I can explain it is a night of misunderstandings, a ritual pantomime of one comical situation after another. The violinist stabs his hand on a broken handle. The lowborn fop tries to pick up cocks in the coffeehouse. No sense of Aristotle whatsoever. I want to make edits. He is not going to have a quick thrust with me in a dirty alleyway. His teeth will never claim my skin. I want a ballet and a dénouement. 

Never again.

I kiss him, and he arches against me with a moan. His clumsy hands claw at my back, and I continue, my own lips sealed against his neck. I have made my would-be phantom into my lover. His desire is heavy against me and I press him to the wall to sink deep inside him, reaching in and stealing the breath out of him. 

I hear the English horns before the drums strike. The silent cobbles are rough and cold against my back. The swirling burn of the stars in the void consoles me. Bon soir. I no longer need to breathe. You cradle me in the gentle hum of a quiet lane in Paris.

Warmth and beauty diffuse through my limbs. I am loose and heavy and languid in the world. I am generous. Wealthy in sound. The darkness above Paris nestles into the sky. Immense. Heavy. I fall into it as the pressure lifts. Paris is quiet. Night. Clatter of cobbles. The driver’s huff and a horse’s snort. I cannot hear the passengers. Wonderful.

I press my cheek against the brick wall and watch my fingernail scrape against the small dips and bumps. I can  _hear_  the tiny flakes of cement coming off against my nails. The chipping sound is splendid. My voice, my *laughter*, hums deeper than it normally does. Is this what it sounds like to myself?

It does not sound like me.

I attempt to sit up, but the heaviness still has me prone, and I vaguely think I see Eleni standing before me, disappointment writ large on her face. She reminds me of my sister.

“I’m not—”

She’s not there. Memory mistaken for reality. I am alone in this alley with…some one. By the state of his clothing, he had hoped to find me of use to him. I push myself away from the street, nearly thinking I shall float away into the ether, but I have no such luck. I disabuse the gentleman with the bad coif and the opened breeches of his thankfully modest jacket.

My name is Nicolas de Lenfent. I am dead. I have a father, and a sister, and a brother. I am picking a poorly-tailored jacket off an equally poorly-arranged dead man. What do you stand to profit by matriculating at the distinguished Sorbonne, I ask? Why sir, you can be easily distracted by shiny objects and steal the clothing of the dead. Yes, sir, my papá is very proud. He writes to me every day, demanding I return the family signet ring. It isn’t even a real signet. He had it made by a business associate in Paris, and then they had it notarized by some heraldic officer or whatever you call them.

The Seine is silent and no longer a languid flute. A stupid smile begins to spread across my lips. The relief loosens my shoulders, and my head clears. The sombre sadness of my existence tucks around me like a cloak of unshed tears. The giddy joy melts away far too quickly, perhaps quicker than last time. It won’t be long, now. 

I make quick work of his purse and hurry down the alleyway. It is blissfully quiet with the normal bustle of evening foot traffic. Priests, whores, priests and whores. The odd unfortunate gentleman. Where is he? He wastes precious seconds of silence and clarity to reorient himself. Then, Nicolas de Lenfent demonstrates how unstable he has become by narrating—

“Yes, good evening, sir.”

“Slow down, slow down, boy, what is the matter, is someone chasing you?”

“In a manner of speaking. I need a freight ticket for Marseille.”

“Bien sûr, Monsieur, by way of Clermont or Lyons?”

Clermont. Clermont. Clermont.

“Which way is faster?”

Clermont.

“Lyons, mais oui. It is almost a direct course. Auvergne would take you a little off-route if you wanted to delay the delivery, but if you want speed, it is Lyons.”

“I-I–”

/Clermont./

“Monsieur, I have other customers waiting behind you.”

“I—désolé, Cl-Lyons, please. I want my trunk to go through Lyons.”

“Your trunk shall travel faster than you, Monsieur.”

“I assure you, we shall be in perfect harmony. There you are.”

“Thank you, Monsieur. And who shall receive it in Marseille?”

“Oh it shall not remain in Marseille. I intend to also purchase its passage through that port on a vessel bound for Cairo. This is the name of the man who must receive it, and none other.”

“What’s in the envelope, Monsieur?”

“A letter, nothing more.  He is to open it before—”

“Hang on, this ain’t a—”

/Listen!/

“He is to open it prior to unlocking the trunk. That is essential. Ergh.”

“Monsieur, you don’t have to pretend—”

It is too soon! I need to affix the label! I must give him my address!

“Here! Pick it up here, do you understand?”

“Get your hands off me, you little brat! Remy! Raoul! Get him off of me!”

“Take it!”

The two bassoons, bassoons, really? It floods back all the louder and more screeching and everything in the center of my head swells. I am stumbling, plunging through the crowds of notes that I can hardly hear where I am going. Blind, mute, alone in a sea of noise, of melody on top of those sounds I miss so much, those sounds that once gave me comfort and succor in the loneliness of my bedroom.

Something swings at me and the crowd parts to let me fall. I press my ear against the ground and I can barely feel the vibration of the nearby carriages, because all I hear is the screaming sawing of their trees still burned into the long-dead timber. I am hollow too, and I echo with everything around me, this festering heart inside my chest silent, so silent I can only wait until the upheaval passes. The swell of the wave releases me. 

I begin to laugh.

I do not have tears bitter enough. I must borrow my strength of feeling from another set of cracks in my face.

“Get out of here! Get on!”

I look down at the money clutched in my left hand and the torn freight ticket for Cairo in my right, grinning like a fool. 

“I don’t want anything you’re sending!”

You don’t understand. I must get to him. Why won’t this man understand that? Why does he give me useless pieces of paper instead? I need to get to him! I don’t want this, I want him!

“Say that to me when you’re not hiding behind a counter, putain!”

At this point in the novel, the crowd is ordinarily spoiling for a fight, but most of them are looking at me and shaking their heads. If a law degree would have granted me the ability to sway these fools, then I am relieved to have escaped that fate.

A strangely embarrassed look comes over the master, his bassoon joining Remy and Raoul’s. I should not remain. It is not that I turn and flee. It is that I back away through flutes and clarinets and a disturbing triangle. I do not turn until my back is to a building foreign to me.

I look up and climb past rungs of running water and sliding glissandos of iron and stone. The stars are pulling down towards me. I open my mouth to receive the darkness and its embrace. I am going to be late for supper. This is going to spoil my appetite.

I had clay here once, fireplaces burning up my love. You looked beautiful in the morning sun, as if the sun rose simply to illuminate your glory. What better metaphor did you make than to force me to lift my hand to shield my eyes against the glare of sunlight around your shape? And I could not hear you after. Why could I not hear you after? Were you truly a ghost, a dead shape, unbearable to think of, unbearable to look at? Or was that I?

Why could I no longer hear the light that was my meaning for existence? What allegorical curse has doomed me? Why did you flee and leave me with my tormentor, my subjugator, my rapist? Am I too sullied for your heaven-sent looks?

The melodies flick their burning tongues against my insides, and I want to go home. If only I knew where that was. I do not wish to return to the place where I was taken. I kept it, in case Lestat might ever look for me there. I wouldn’t be able to hear him. That hurts the most of all his blows against me. But I forgive him. I will go to him if I can find a station master who does not mind dealing with a slowly putrefying mind. 

I want no one. This neighborhood is unfamiliar, and the stiffness in my legs makes me wonder if I have been walking forever from rooftop to rooftop. I am like a cat, pacing the rooftops of Paris, meowing for my meathead loser of a lover. It’s the baker’s boy all over again; at least he brought pain around. I’m head-over-heels for an illiterate huntsman who is afraid of the dark. I did everything I could for him, not realizing he had already full use of me.

“Stop brooding, Lenfent.”

My jaw hurts. The sounds swell and ebb, and I can recognize no skyline around me. Am I in another city? Is this…Cairo? The ticket in my hand is canceled, torn. My legs are stiff enough to have been traveling in a trunk. But no one is here. There is no trunk. Merde! They must not have followed the instructions, and now I am stranded with no idea where I am. I could be in Paris for all I know.

It certainly sounds like Paris, that numbing droning unbearable…


End file.
